VIDEO: MMTA seeking feedback on marketing efforts

The Massachusetts Marine Trades Association is looking for suggestions on marketing its website to the largest possible target audience.

The men in this video, who hold positions in the marine industry, often go fishing before heading in to work.

The association has worked to create a new website and two videos promoting manufacturing and service jobs in the industry, which can be viewed here.

This video features workers in the Massachusetts boating industry talking about their jobs.

There is no estimate of how many skilled labor jobs recreational boating industry manufacturers need to fill, but a Workforce Assessment conducted two years ago by the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas found that marine dealers would have at least 31,000 service technician positions unfilled by 2019, MRAA president Matt Gruhn told Trade Only Today.

The industry is growing at around a 6 percent clip, and that’s projected to last through 2018.

But Gruhn worries that won’t last if people can’t get the boats they want, power them how they want, or get the boats and engines they already have serviced. If they become frustrated they’re making payments on a boat they can’t use for a whole season, there’s more of a chance they’ll leave to do something else, he said.

The MRAA partnered with the Rhode Island Marine Trade Association to develop an industry-wide workforce development plan, also to help provide structure.

Read more about the industry’s efforts in the April edition of Soundings Trade Only.

The Marine Industries Association of South Florida and the Marine Industry Cares Foundation, organizers of the 41st Annual Broward County Waterway Cleanup held on March 3, collected 32 tons of trash from 31 sites around the county.